Strange: the James Ellroy novel American Tabloid sat on my shelf for quite a while, unread. My esteem for the first two entries of the LA Quartet, The Black Dahlia and The Big Nowhere, hadn't waned through the years. (LA Confidential and especially White Jazz, though not bad, are lesser efforts.) I knew he admired Don DeLillo's Libra, inspiring him to send a copy of AT to DeLillo when it came out, with a note informing him that he'd basically be promoting both books on his upcoming tour. I credit Ellroy with being one of the writers who've gone furthest to shape my idea of what constitutes real crime writing. Yet I held back. I was reluctant to see him fail to distinguish himself among the crowded field of those who've taken on one of the most infamous and tangled crimes of the 20th century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Occasionally, I'd try the opening, a scene of Howard Hughes shooting up, to see if it was time, and put it down soon after, no more reassured. His intention, I knew, was to write a historical novel. Based on his choice of introduction, I thought he might have produced a mere sensationalized version of (well-trod) history instead. As I don't realize enough, I was worried for nothing.
It's not sensationalized, he's not turned on by blood and bullets, but it is an appropriately nasty one. That's 500-plus pages of concentrated and assorted and, above all, focused nastiness, to be exact. Typically I'm prepared to give a novelist working at half that length some leeway for looseness of form. Here, it's not just the sentences and the paragraphs that are uniformly clipped to the essentials. There may not be an extraneous page in the entire book. Despite the sordid material, the structure, leaping at times between scenes, transcripts of conversations, sleazy tabloid articles, and more, is so precise, the movement so swift, it doesn't oppress as one might expect. It could also help explain why a certain odd verbal choice that runs through the book didn't wear me down: They. They. They. They. He. He. He. He.
Ellroy doesn't stretch credulity in connecting the Kennedys, the Mob, the FBI, the CIA, and Cuba. The presentation may be harsh and stylized but it doesn't mean he's off the mark with the framework of his speculation. As for the writer's bombastic right-wing politics, or perhaps once bombastic, since these days his policy seems to be the less said, the better, on the page, at least, he's skeptical. He thinks little of J. Edgar Hoover and his obsession with terrorizing Communists/left-wing idealists. In one of many memorable scenes, an FBI agent breaks into the apartment of a business owner who's suspected of having shown solidarity with striking workers. He's interrupted from his humiliating intelligence gathering work by the man's wife. With weariness, she says: "So you people are common thieves now?" The agent knocks over a lamp as he runs out. (The women of the book are almost uniformly formidable, the few notable bright spots in a narrative dominated by crooked, bloodthirsty, and psychotic men.) The plot to murder Castro has as much to do with cash as it does with the threat of the Red Menace. And no one is more execrable than the racist thugs and klan members who violently oppose the mounting trend toward racial equality and justice.
The suspicion of sensationalism that may initially arise is further attenuated by his handling of historical figures and others. Howard Hughes shooting up, it turns out, is the least that can be mentioned about him. Ellroy's portrait has layers, all of them dark. The same goes with J. Edgar Hoover. He's not much impressed by John F. Kennedy, whose character aligns rather well with the fact, which I picked up years ago, that his favorite writer was Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels. Robert Kennedy, though, despite a fatal lapse, seems to have the writer's respect for his integrity. Particularly admirable is how he inhabits each of their voices - the tics, the modulation of tone, the distinct personalities. And these are just a few among many more. Ellroy can do high and low, badinage and brutishness.
Once more he builds a narrative around three men. Maybe one has a soul that finally emerges from the murk. Maybe. Whatever it is, it gets him killed.
Reading this book in 2019, the detail with which he delves into criminal activity engaged in by people at about every level of society remains useful. Reminder: Only the methods have changed. The FBI agent doesn't need to break into your home and rifle through your papers anymore. Technology has advanced enough so that you can be monitored on any device in your possession. Companies, eager to profit, are competing to devise better and better spy technology to sell to the highest bidder - namely governments that are enemies of democracy. Much of what goes on in the book is supposed to be concealed from the broader public. Ellroy succeeds in placing it within the reader's grasp.
I also think about those who've wondered, with some measure of hopelessness, if fiction that truly captures Trump and the madness of our times is possible. Writing like this, undaunted neither by the broad canvas nor the diversity of speech (invective included) and media nor the roiling atmosphere nor the depths necessary to limn, is one answer. In Ellroy's approach to history, no way could he escape appearing as he is: not a complicated man, not a controversial figure. A puke.
